


to remove the veins attached to initials

by sxldato



Category: Supernatural
Genre: ???? probably?? it's a mystery, Angst and Humor, Coming Out, Family Drama, Gen, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Identity, Identity Issues, Post-Season/Series 07, Pre-Season/Series 10, Protective Siblings, Sam-Centric, Self-Acceptance, Trans Female Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4006981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sxldato/pseuds/sxldato
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started, officially, with him responding to the name “Samantha.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	to remove the veins attached to initials

**Author's Note:**

> i'd be lying if i said i've been doing anything this past month besides catching up on 4 seasons worth of spn and writing sam-centric fics  
> trans girl sam is near and dear to my heart. also. i want all the shitty spn fans to find this and get pissed off  
> this is pretty non-specific to which season this takes place in??? idk, it's definitely after s7, but not after s10 (both of which uptown fucked me up like jesus christ what the hell)  
> real talk if there is one thing within this pile of shit show that i can wholeheartedly admit to loving, it's sam winchester. i like dean, but my feelings about him are more complicated. he makes me nervous. men like dean make me nervous.  
> ANYWAYS  
> slightly beta'd idk i'm terrible sorry  
> title is from Aimee Herman's Poetics Statement in _Troubling the Line_  
> 

It started, officially, with him responding to the name “Samantha.”

_He’d_ known it for years—there was something not quite right, something about his body that made his skin crawl—but he’d never really put a name on it, not until he’d left the family. Even after that, he still kept it to himself, ignored things that were said that made his chest constrict. It wasn’t their fault for saying those things, he told himself over and over. He hadn’t said anything to make them think otherwise.

But should they have been assuming who he was in the first place?

It didn’t matter. However it could have been handled in the past, he was still standing there in the kitchen of the bunker, the refrigerator door wide open, and a beer bottle shattered across the floor at his feet.

Dean was doing that thing with his face, the eyebrow and pursed lips thing that made it very clear that this was not gonna go unaddressed. “Never seen you turn your head so fast at that joke before.”

He’d lived his whole life thinking on his feet and yet here he was, dread rapidly settling in and making his knees go weak. He’d been tortured, maimed and killed, and yet this, _this_ was what he couldn’t handle. This was the most painful, crushing fear he’d ever felt.

“It—it was nothing, you’re reading into it—“

“Don’t bullshit a bullshitter, Sam.”

It was getting hard to breathe. “I… Dean, listen—“

“This isn’t some monster messing with your head, right? I mean, you know you’re a dude.”

He felt like he’d just been punched in the gut with a pair of brass knuckles; for a brief, terrifying moment, he thought he was going to be sick. But then it settled, ebbing out into the rest of the violent discomfort that was making his whole body quiver where he stood.

“Sammy?” The furrow in Dean’s brow was becoming more and more prominent the longer Sam took to respond. “Answer me.”

As screwed up as his fight-or-flight instincts must have been after actively searching out danger for so long, he still found himself turning on his heel and bolting from the room.

“Sam!”

His ears were ringing as he took the stairs two at a time and slammed through the front door.

- 

The rain was coming down in bullets, leaving him soaked in seconds. He took a left on the gravel road, now a slurry of mud and stone, and ran. His boots made heavy splashes with each step and water seeped through the soles of his shoes. His clothes stuck to his body and weighed him down, and running became more difficult with the threat of slipping in the mud and falling on his face.

He slowed to a stop and sat down in the wet grass by the side of the road, catching his breath. Thunder rolled through the dark clouds, a low rumble somewhere off in the distance, and the insistent pitter-patter of the rain steadied his pounding heart.

When the sound of tires turning over the gravel met his ears, he cursed himself for not thinking to take the car. The Impala turned the corner and Sam was too weary to get back on his feet, too afraid to move.

Dean pulled up right next to him and unrolled the window. “Sammy, what the hell?”

Words escaped him. He just sat there, focusing on the pattern of the tire marks left in the road. He heard Dean sigh, mutter something to himself, and then, “Could you at least get in the car?”

He was shaking and cold; he wanted nothing more than to go to his room and burrow under the covers and maybe never come out. But he didn’t want to be with Dean. He wasn’t ready for all of the questions he must have had. He wasn’t even sure he had all the answers.

“We can talk about it later. Or not at all, whatever you want. Just don’t want you dying from pneumonia or some shit, okay?”

His body was heavy when he picked himself up off the ground and he didn’t look at Dean when he got in the car. He kept staring at his hands, fidgeting with the scar that still stretched over his palm.

- 

When Sam was ready to talk, Dean immediately went for the bottle of whiskey in the cabinet and sat down across from him at the table. It was long, but not wide, and Sam wished there was more space between them.

“You gonna tell me what’s going on?”

“Yeah, just—just let me say my piece before you start.”

“… Okay.”

Once he began, he didn’t know how to stop. He kept going off on tangents, explaining this or that to stall the part where it circled back around to him. He didn’t look at Dean, didn’t want to see the shock or disgust on his face. He talked himself hoarse, and then he talked some more. He thought that when he was done, the anxiety would subside, but he was wrong. Even when he finished speaking, his thumb still dug into his hand, sending pain shooting up his palm to his forearm. His knee bounced nervously and his heartbeat was in his throat.

Dean was quiet for a while, silently processing before he spoke. He didn’t look angry or disappointed, but then again, he’d always been talented at covering up any trace of emotion. Sam wished that Dean could hurry up; if he was out of the family for good, he wanted to hear it sooner rather than later. The suspense was driving him nuts.

Sam had busied himself with tracing the pencil marks in the wood of the table when Dean’s voice slammed through the silence, sending it smashing to the floor like a chandelier.

“So, you’re telling me you want to be a woman?”

It wasn’t nearly as bad as Sam had been preparing himself for. “I—well, I’m kind of already a woman, since I identify that way, you know?”

“And the parts you don’t have…” Dean gestures vaguely at Sam’s chest. “That’s fine? Because typically, women who don’t have breasts are called _men_ , Sam.”

“What about women who have breast cancer? Women who’ve had to have surgery and don’t have breasts anymore? Does that make them men?”

“But they had breasts at _one point_ —“

"That doesn’t matter.” The more Dean said, the harder it was to keep himself calm. “Sex and gender are two different concepts, and they don’t always line up with one another. So yes, there are some women who don’t have breasts. There are some women who have penises. That doesn’t mean they aren’t women.”

There was a shorter period of silence after that, but it was thick, the same way the air got when it was too humid.

“Okay, I’m gonna roll with this.” Dean shifted a little in his chair, leaning forward. “So you’re a woman in a man’s body.”

“A man’s body is any body of someone who identifies as a man, and I don’t, so… no. My body is still a woman’s body.”

Dean scrubbed a hand over his face. “Jesus, Sammy, I’m trying—“

“I know, I know, this is all new to you, it’s okay if you don’t get it at first. It takes time.”

Dean popped open the cap on the bottle of whiskey, took a long drink from it, then passed it to Sam. “So what, you’re my sister now? Do I call you a girl in public? Cause you don’t totally look like a girl at the moment.”

“It’s called ‘passing,’ and trans people can choose to pass as their gender or not.”

“Are you gonna choose to pass?” Dean looked almost as tired as Sam felt. “Can I get, like, a warning before you come out of your room in a dress or something?”

“I don’t know what I want,” Sam said. “I’ll keep you posted.”

“And you _really_ want me to call you a girl and all that stuff. Changing your pronouns, your name, all that?”

“My name is fine, but yeah, all that ‘other stuff’ would be… it’d be nice.” His heart was gonna give out if this doesn’t end soon.

Dean exhaled. “Okay, okay, uh… But after almost thirty years, I’m gonna screw up—you know that.”

“I’m not expecting you to be perfect at this, Dean. It’s fine if you slip up. Just try for me, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

The silence resumed, and Sam excused himself to go get some air, but Dean stopped him on his way out.

“Sammy, I won’t pretend to understand any of this right now, but this doesn’t change anything.”

Dread settled in Sam’s chest. “What do you mean?”

“I mean you’re still my brother— or sister? What? Fuck, just-- I’ll love you no matter what and all that sappy crap, alright? Promise.”

Sam couldn’t do anything except nod and leave the room before he suffocated.

-

She started off small because she had no idea what she was doing. Her hands felt too big for those tiny tools, she’d never put anything on her face besides shaving cream, and she was always afraid that Dean would walk in on her while she was changing. She didn’t want him to see her exposed in nothing but her underwear and the one bra she owned. She wore it under her regular clothes, so there was no way Dean could know, and she wanted to keep it that way.

“Why do you still dress like that?” Dean asked abruptly, breaking the silence between the two of them as they sat together at the library table. “You’re still dressing like a dude.”

She was still in her pajamas, and while her underwear sure as hell didn’t confirm her as a woman, she still felt naked without it. “I don’t dress like a dude,” she said, not taking her eyes off the text she was failing to translate.

“Uh, yeah, you do.”

“No.” She was calm as she argued—that’s something she’d learned quickly, that she needed to be calm when she confronted Dean about things he said. “I dress like _me_.”

- 

She forgot to tell Dean the night before that she going to wear makeup the next day, so when she came downstairs, Dean nearly choked on his bacon when he saw her.

“What—“ Dean coughed harshly, slapping a hand over his sternum. “—The hell did you do to yourself?”

“If you give yourself a heart attack because I drew lines on my eyelids, I _will_ laugh at you.”

“But your eyebrows—“

“I filled them in.” She sat down next to him, stole a slice of bacon off his plate. “Come on, it’s not that bad.”

“No, it’s not. _That’s_ the thing. You pull it off, and I didn’t expect you to be able to.”

“It’s nice to hear you have so much faith in me.”

“Take the compliment, Samantha,” Dean snapped, and the name had Sam’s heart soaring. “You look damn good.”

-

“So, I have a question.”

“Okay.”

The way Dean struggled to find the right words, words that wouldn’t cause harm or offend, was almost funny, if not kind of sweet. “Does this mean you’re, you know, a lesbian? Cause… if you still like girls, but _you’re_ a girl, then—“

“I was never straight in the first place, Dean.”

“… Excuse me.”

“I’m pansexual.”

“Fucking pans ain’t hot, Sam. What the _fuck_.”

Sam left before she could laugh or scream.

- 

There was no way around it. She was tall, with broad shoulders and a strong jaw and big hands. She didn’t have hips or breasts or whatever the fuck people thought women should have. She didn’t pass, and that while that didn’t bother her, it definitely seemed to bother others.

She couldn’t use women’s bathrooms because cis women were terrifying, and she couldn’t use men’s bathrooms because she’d get beaten to hell unless Dean came with her. It wasn’t her lowest point, needing her brother to look out for her in public bathrooms. It wasn’t that it was embarrassing, either; it was just frustrating, almost enough to warrant tears. She really just wanted to be able to take a piss without the threat of death, and in the grand scheme of things she’d asked for, that didn’t seem like a very big one.  

Whenever it all became too much, she’d sit down on the sidewalk, in the booth of a diner, in the middle of the damn bunker, and she’d breathe. Or at least, she would try to. Some days were harder than others. But no matter what, Dean would sit down next to her, hold her close so she could hear the steady rhythm of his heart and try to match her own to it. Each time she got too close to the edge, he pulled her back, guiding her until she gained solid footing once more. He’d keep his arm around her, walk her through the steps to breathing in case she’d forgotten. He’d say, “that’s it, that’s my girl,” as she drew in full breaths, as she remembered how to live.

They never said anything to each other when it ended, but she hoped he knew that he mattered, that she’d be lost without him. She would have drowned so long ago if he hadn’t always been there.  

-

Sometimes books came in the mail, which was weird because they _never_ got mail. She would find them on her bed, already taken out of their boxes, a silent gesture of acceptance despite the lack of full understanding. They were books, ones like _Middlesex_ and _Golden Boy_ and _A Safe Girl to Love_ , ones about people like her, _women_ like her.

She never thanked Dean for them because they didn’t do that in their family; they didn’t do ‘thank you’, because that meant they felt something. And they couldn’t do that, not in their line of work. But she made sure to have _Troubling the Line_ out in front of her, as opposed to the newspaper, when Dean came downstairs.

“You got a favorite?” He’d ask her. She’d lost count of how many times he used that, but she didn’t mind. It was an easy icebreaker, a way for them to talk about what made her, _her_.

Every time he asked, she’d smile and reply with, “I like them all.”

They all came from the same place, all meant the same thing.

**Author's Note:**

> If you're interested, these are links to the books that were mentioned (I can't speak for Middlesex, Golden Boy, or A Safe Girl to Love, but I own Troubling the Line and I think it's amazing): 
> 
> http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2187.Middlesex  
> http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/15803173-golden-boy  
> http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22050397-a-safe-girl-to-love  
> http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16157123-troubling-the-line


End file.
